What Once We Loved (14 page)

The welt he left joined many scars, the puflfiness of her eyes a common sight.

“Best put some raw beefsteak on that blow,” a miner bringing his laundry told her. Squinting, he said, “Whooee. That's a bad one.”

She'd taken the blows to her head and her face as though she deserved them. Hadn't she given him a useless girl child? Hadn't she come to him not the beauty he believed from the photograph of her cousin but a common girl, trained in fieldwork and simple house chores, not the refined woman he imagined he would bed? Hadn't she arrived with feet larger than some men, a sign her family did not care enough for her to bind her and then tend her, as she'd need in order to survive? Yes, the welts and hits she deserved. She was not a woman complete unto herself despite what Mazy Bacon said each woman could become if The Heart One loved her and they returned that devotion.

She defied Dow Yuk's order about the infant, hiding her daughter, placing her palm over the tiny mouth when she cried. As long as Passion lived, she'd stay.

She'd named her Passion. A time on the trail, Sister Esther said the
word meant “deep feeling.” Naomi had such deep feeling for her baby. She willed her child would have it too, so she would live.

So tiny, Passion slept inside a box that once held rolled tobacco. On cool mornings, Naomi placed the child at the warming oven of the stove, watching her, picking her up at the first sounds of discomfort. Naomi vowed that she would not dream to be like Chou-Jou as long as Passion looked into her eyes each morning. Instead she would remain the quiet mother, worker, protector.

When the infant was strong enough to hold her head and then sit and watch the world of her father wearing wide sleeves as he exchanged coins and gold dust with men of pale skin, Naomi would place the child on her back to keep her safe. When no one was looking, she would brush the miners' clothes with more speed, while quickly filling a tiny buckskin bag she kept tied around the baby s waist, filling it with gold dust, readying their escape.

Once when she had delivered washing to a new district, the clothes piled high on top of her head, the baby on her back, she thought she had seen the blind woman led by the dog. The dog barked at her, and the woman calmed him. She recognized the voice. “Who goes there?” Missy Suzie asked.

Naomi had almost spoken when Missy Esther came out of a shop. She looked straight at Naomi and gasped, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

“What is it, Esther?” Missy Suzie asked.

“I think its…”

Naomi had disappeared between the buildings, cobwebs brushing her face as she ran.

“Have you learned a few Spanish words?” Nehemiah asked. “One or two,” Tipton told him.

“Splendid! And as your reward, I have a gift for you.” He handed her a stone.

“Oh. An agate.”

“They bore you,” he said.

“They're lovely. I just don't know what to do with them,” she said to him.

“Eventually I'll put them into settings,” he said. He drew a design with a pencil on a piece of paper before him at the table. “This would make a lovely brooch. And this one, for a silver letter opener.”

“You have so little time when you're here for dabbling in such things,” she told him.

“Designing soothes me. Perhaps you should draw more.”

“I'm occupied with…study,” she said.

“I think of you always while I'm gone,” his words softened. “Soon I'll be campaigning.” He cleared his throat. “Unless we were to begin our family.”

Tipton stood, dropping the agates onto the carpeted floor. “I'll put these in a jar and cover them with water,” she said. “They look like rainbows then.” She hurried into the kitchen, catching her breath. She had no intention of discussing such intimacies with her husband. She was quite sure her parents never had talked of those “private things,” and she certainly wasn't going to. She hadn't even allowed him to see her unclothed, and she wasn't sure she ever would.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Kossuth,” Nehemiah said, following her into the kitchen. “I…fumble at these things.” He reached for her hand, held it. She knew that she shook. “It's just that I am not getting any younger and—”

“Progresso, “
she said, spinning away from him. She slid the curtain back from the little cupboard, moved things around. “I'm sure that was one of the words Chita told me about. It means making progress,” she said, holding up a wide-mouthed jar.

“Something we apparently aren't,” her husband said.

That first afternoon out had gone well. They'd agreed to tie Carmine to the wagon and keep Ewald moving in the rear. Then the next day, they exchanged it, tying the black jack to the wagon. They hobbled both animals that night, letting Carmine loose in the morning. There were no mares open, Jumper having bred Ruths animals; and the stocky mares Matthew had bought up were said to promise foals come spring. At least Ruth hoped she had no open mares. From the size of the jacks, she could tell there'd need to be some accommodations made to get her mares bred when the time came. She didn't want it to be happening on the trail north, didn't want foals born next year just before winter.

She eyed the dusty trail ahead as it meandered around clusters of oak or an occasional pine that acted as prelude to the dark timber covering the hillsides farther ahead. It wasn't a well-traveled trail though it was well marked. Matthew said folks talked about a stage run that would head this way someday, north through Yreka and into Oregon. Ruth didn't see how. There were sections that required bringing the mares single file, with the wagon wheels barely narrow enough to keep to the road. The children walked then, and Ruth drove the wagon. Not that Lura couldn't, but the older woman appeared to dislike looking down onto the manzanita and oak trees that dribbled off below her into steep ravines.

Ruth kept thinking about Jumper, couldn't seem to stop it. His presence would have made this new journey so much richer. Even Koda acted strange, as though he knew that something was wrong, that one who'd once traveled with him no longer shared his trail. Ruth was silly, she supposed, imagining that horses missed each other. Just struggling with her own missings—of her brother, her boy, her horse, and even Mazy, she decided.

Koda did not like the black jack. He snorted and shook his head as Ruth stood off to the side of the trail allowing the wagon to pass with
Ewald tied behind. Ruth couldn't ride Koda anywhere near the animal, not that she wanted to, his being Matthew and Luras now. But once or twice the day before, when she rode back to tell Matthew something, the blackjack brayed out of nowhere, its trot-trot gait full speed toward them, nearly skidding to a stop in the dust just before he would have crashed into Koda's side.

“I believe that jack knows exactly what he's doing,” Ruth said. “Running up, all threatening. Maybe we should hobble him.” She backed up a nervous Koda who raised and lowered his head in irritation, his bit and bridle jangling in the autumn air.

“Got his own personality, that's for sure,” Matthew told her. “He'll be all right.”

“I just wondered how far you thought we should go tonight before making camp?” Ruth asked.

“Whatevers your pleasure.”

“You've been this way, so I'm deferring to you.” She didn't know why she needed to explain to him her request for information. Maybe she was still feeling a little embarrassment about their conversation, his assumption that she'd “partner” more than just for jacks or to get cheap land. “And you've done a good job choosing,” she said, offering the compliment both as something genuine and as an olive branch against their sparring.

Matthew nodded. “Would have gone over the Trinity Mountains through French Gulch if you hadn't gotten Elizabeths letter when you did,” he said. “He will have received it by now. What you sent on.”

“And be roaring mad if I know Zane. And I do.”

“Nothing wrong with being angry. It's what a man does with it that counts him,” Matthew said. He cleared his throat. “We should make it to a place across from a ridge that looks just like a backbone,” he said. “Rest there for the night.”

Ruth felt an edge of disappointment that he'd changed the subject from her future to resting places. But it was no one's business but her
own, she guessed, though Elizabeth's last-minute announcement had made it pretty public.

David Taylor had agreed to deliver the divorce papers she'd had drawn up. There was little left to do but wait until Zane responded through her solicitor. There would be a messy court event, but with her and Jessie in another state and his own body ravaged by the amputation, perhaps he'd realize the futility of resisting. That was probably wishful thinking, and she'd promised to tell herself the truth.

“You rub that whip handle,” Matthew nodded his hat toward her right hand. “Tells me you're hungering for something. I figure if you're ever going to use it on me, watching your hand'll be fair warning.”

They rode side by side for a ways, the white-topped mountain Matthew said was called Shasta shimmered in the distance.

“I was thinking of my future,” she said. “Well, maybe hanging on a bit to what I left behind, too. And about what I hope to find in Oregon.”

“Shasta's a lot hotter than Jacksonville. Fewer folks there too. Table Rocks are interesting. I want to climb them sometime. Supposed to have unusual flowers up there in the spring.”

Ruth nodded. He was so much more talkative about weather and land and…things.

“Carmines a good-looking jack,” Matthew said as they prepared to camp for the night. “I'll catch him up now, if that's all right with you. At least he doesn't race toward a body the way Ewald does.”

“So far he's demonstrated better manners,” Ruth said. It was the last bit of gentle conversation she had with Matthew for the next few hours as they attempted to round up her jack.

Ears perked forward, the big red animal let her and Koda approach. He lowered his head like a tame goat, then thrust his head up, bolted, and ran, kicking up his heels so close to her horse, he nearly got Koda in the neck. Ruth jerked the reins back, while the gelding sidestepped. But the jack took this as a challenge, and he turned. This time with ears back and mouth open, he lunged for the gelding.

“You're not hurting this horse,” Ruth shouted.

She spun Koda away from the jack who quick-trotted up the side of the trail then down into the mares, pushing them aside, biting a neck, kicking at a hindquarter as he moved against the tide. Just as Ruth would get close to him again, the animal would forge up the trail, pass the wagon on the ravine side, and end up in front of it as though to harass the oxen who were lumbering along and braying as though he did it for sport.

The sounds and quick movements and kicking and nipping got the mares all skittery and startled. Then Ewald, still tied to the wagon, brayed and pulled back when all day he'd been happily plodding along with the herd.

Ruth realized it was the first time they'd tried to catch Carmine up. He'd been corralled at the ranchero, tied up for them when they rode out the day before, and kept that way until today.

“Maybe he can be roped,” Jason shouted from his smallish mare who sidestepped and snorted as the red jack approached.

“Give it a try,” Ruth shouted. She watched the boy swing his rope, surprised at his skill for someone just ten. A few missed loops, and then it was Matthew who swirled his lariat closest. While he tossed the rope to Carmine's head, the jack lowered his ears, bucked and pulled and got himself so woven within the trail herd that Matthew's rope slipped off.

“Let's wait until we're into a more open area where we can round up the mares in a rope ramuda,” he suggested, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with his arm. He replaced his hat and stared at Ruth who nodded agreement.

Once over a ridge, they located a spot wide enough. “String that rope from that oak there, to that big pine,” Ruth shouted. “Mariah, you tie off the other end. Soon as the mares are driven into the center we'll try for the jack.” While they did that, Ruth noticed the whitish row of hide at Carmine's left: fetlock, and something rang a bell inside her head.

She dismounted carrying her whip at her side. Carmine trotted back and forth beyond the rope corral, acting as though he wanted in
but was not likely to stay settled even if they let him. Ruth walked slowly, staring at those dark eyes, one wandering to the side, and when he saw she had no rope, he slowed his trot but still moved back and forth before the mares and lone milk cow.